Kinect for Windows SDK going commercial in early 2012

With Kinect already being used to develop applications for health care and …

A patient uses a Kinect application as part of a rehabilitation exercise.

The Kinect for Windows SDK, a beta version of which is already available to developers, is being prepared for a commercial rollout in early 2012.

The current beta version is targeted at academics, enthusiasts, and researchers who use the motion-sensing capabilities of the Kinect for Xbox 360 technology to create new applications. Kinect apps have already popped up in health care, education, and other industries, Microsoft noted in an announcement today. Despite being designed for video games, the Kinect—which has 600 patents behind it—has moved beyond the gaming world both because of its usefulness and its price: the Kinect lets people buy a device with 3D motion capture, facial and voice recognition, microphones, depth sensors, and an RGB camera for $149.

While the software development kit released earlier this year targets non-commercial projects, Microsoft today said "the Kinect for Windows commercial program will launch early next year, giving global businesses the tools they need to develop applications on Kinect that could take their businesses and industries in new directions." Microsoft's announcement did not detail the terms under which the Kinect SDK will be released commercially.

Microsoft officials also discussed the forthcoming commercial SDK with the Financial Times, which details the Microsoft pilot program involving “more than 200 companies for use of the Kinect across 25 industries, from healthcare to education, advertising and the automotive industry.”

For example, Toyota developed a virtual showroom allowing cars to be explored with gestures, and a Spanish technology group called Tedesys is using a Kinect device linked to a PC and monitor, allowing surgeons “to wave their way through patient records on screen during operations,” the Financial Times notes. Microsoft Xbox official Alex Kipman told the paper "12 months from now, educational, academic and commercial applications will look nothing like what they are today."

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, along with more than 100 pages of technical documentation. It is targeted at developers who use C++, C#, or Visual Basic. Kinect applications are designed to be used in conjunction with Windows 7, and presumably the forthcoming Windows 8 will receive the same treatment.

I got my Kinect off Amazon in "like new" condition for $76. The game wasn't opened and the packaging seemed untouched so I think I scored big-time. My gaming setup is too close to where I sit for normal 'dancing' use but I got it to add voice control of upcoming games like Mass Effect 3. I don't even have to speak very loudly for it to respond to the "Xbox" command, so I'm satisfied so far. Maybe the update this month will add more commands that I can use...

Now their Windows 8 Metro UI is starting to make much more sense, actually.

One Windows to Rule Them All didn't make much sense given the disparity between touch gestures on a tablet and mouse/keyboard inputs on a desktop, but it just clicked that Kinect is the bridge between that divide.

Shouldn't the title of the article be more like "Official:Kinect for Windows SDK going commercial in early 2012" ??? It wasn't really news that it was already targeted for then, I'm pretty sure I've read that was the target date when they released the beta and even before then.

Sifaka wrote:

So lets hide important patient information during surgery so a doctor has to wave his hands when he should be operating.... um... why does that sound like a horrible idea to me?

If the team needs to be able to issue commands to a computer mid-procedure, then having to make physical contact with said machine presents a host of issues. Most of those issues relate to contamination. Any machine brought into the environment of the patient needs to not become a safe haven for microbes, both to protect that patient, the next patient, and the staff. No physical contact= no need to clean it afterwards in many cases, especially if it also means you get to keep the machine at a distance from the patient.

That said, I've seen way too often that COWs (Computers On Wheels, the term used at least in some hospitals for the carts hauled around with a computer on them) lessen the interaction with the patient. I would hope during an operation that it would not be the lead surgeon monkeying with the machine and missing the fact that the patient is bleeding out.

It's kinda like being on an airplane and watching the flight attendants monkeying with the video player for the pre-flight safety brief for 10 minutes when it only would take 5 minutes to just do it the old fashioned way. (I've seen that happen MULTIPLE times on multiple airlines). The machine becomes the focus rather than the outcome. It's silly when it's a video. It's potentially life threatening in a clinical setting.

Wait, so the SDK will cost money now? If so, how much? If not, what does "commercial rollout" mean exactly?

The article's a bit short on the critical details.

Likely, a terms and conditions for selling applications developed for Kinect, maybe extracting licensing fees above a certain threshold of sales, kind of like the Unreal iOS engine. It's also possible the SDK could indeed cost money.

Now if we can get a much needed hardware revision. They should also offload the processing duty to the PC in order to boost the resolution and decrease the hardware cost.

Kinect on the PC pumps about 4x the amount of data to the PC than it does to the XBox. It's pretty much all in software.

So the onboard hardware is unused?

There is no 'onboard processing hardware', the kinect itself is merely a bunch of cameras and a microphone, the heavy lifting is performed by the 360 hardware itself.

I'm pretty sure the resolution of these cameras is currently capped to VGA resolution, but supports far more than that (4x I'm pretty sure as the OP stated). What the OP is getting at, is a PC should have no problem utilizing Kinect to its full potential as there apparently there are bandwidth constraints with the 360 and supporting older systems.

Funny originally Microsoft was getting mad at all the hackers/modders for using their Kinect outside a Xbox. Now look where it is at, thanks to everyone but Microso

I think there was a bit of confusion there, they didn't want anyone modifying the Kinect, probably so no one could cheat in games. When people started using it on a PC Microsoft was issuing statements that it hadn't been hacked and no modifications were made, then it came out that they'd left USB access unsecure on purpose to give greater access to the hardware (like the fact you can plug it into a computer and it works, the only requirements were drivers on the PC end).

The idiot who came out with the angry statement to CNET about bringing the police in was probably thinking along the line of mod chips in consoles more than anything else.

Edit: Quote from Alex Kipman at Microsoft

Quote:

The first thing to talk about is, Kinect was not actually hacked. Hacking would mean that someone got to our algorithms that sit inside of the Xbox and was able to actually use them, which hasn't happened. Or, it means that you put a device between the sensor and the Xbox for means of cheating, which also has not happened. That's what we call hacking, and that's what we have put a ton of work and effort to make sure doesn't actually occur.

What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.

This is fun and cool and I can see a few legit non-game uses (like healthcare), but I doubt I'll be using it in business apps anytime soon.

I don't know; I could see it being super useful for things like working with Visio diagrams and spreadsheets (especially big ones). Horizontal scrolling is a bitch.

True, but I'm not sure that will gain you anything over a good touch mouse.

PowerPoint presentations... now those are dying for a small input device at the lectern that the presenter can wave their hand over to go forward, back, etc. Especially when you have to share a remote mouse with the 9 presenters in front of you. Ewww.

PowerPoint presentations... now those are dying for a small input device at the lectern that the presenter can wave their hand over to go forward, back, etc. Especially when you have to share a remote mouse with the 9 presenters in front of you. Ewww.

Good point, but hardly requires the tech of Kinect to pull off.

The nice part of the remotes with the Next and Previous buttons on them is that they are unobtrusive.

I got my Kinect off Amazon in "like new" condition for $76. The game wasn't opened and the packaging seemed untouched so I think I scored big-time. My gaming setup is too close to where I sit for normal 'dancing' use but I got it to add voice control of upcoming games like Mass Effect 3. I don't even have to speak very loudly for it to respond to the "Xbox" command, so I'm satisfied so far. Maybe the update this month will add more commands that I can use...

I have pre-ordered the new Rabbids game for Kinect. The camera takes live video of you and your living room then it puts those on screen so that it's your body--not a cartoon avatar--playing. Then rabbids start popping up out of your floor and you stomp them. Watching the YouTubes of it, it's amazing to see a real person in there with the rabbids instead of an avatar.So here's what I was thinking: if some smart person will write a game in which I (not an avatar) can fly through the Grand Canyon or over a photorealistic city (like the Big Lebowski flying over LA), I will buy it. Use arm motions for steering (arms down at sides for cruising, arms out horizontal to hover, both arms at 11:00 to veer left, etc.). Maybe use voice commands for climb, dive, faster, etc. Of course, the player would have to set up a portable green screen behind to keep the camera from displaying the living room furniture.

Funny originally Microsoft was getting mad at all the hackers/modders for using their Kinect outside a Xbox. Now look where it is at, thanks to everyone but Microso

I think there was a bit of confusion there, they didn't want anyone modifying the Kinect, probably so no one could cheat in games. When people started using it on a PC Microsoft was issuing statements that it hadn't been hacked and no modifications were made, then it came out that they'd left USB access unsecure on purpose to give greater access to the hardware (like the fact you can plug it into a computer and it works, the only requirements were drivers on the PC end).

The idiot who came out with the angry statement to CNET about bringing the police in was probably thinking along the line of mod chips in consoles more than anything else.

Edit: Quote from Alex Kipman at Microsoft

Quote:

The first thing to talk about is, Kinect was not actually hacked. Hacking would mean that someone got to our algorithms that sit inside of the Xbox and was able to actually use them, which hasn't happened. Or, it means that you put a device between the sensor and the Xbox for means of cheating, which also has not happened. That's what we call hacking, and that's what we have put a ton of work and effort to make sure doesn't actually occur.

What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.

Fair enough. But would you think we would not see this SDK today and non-game expansion if not for some enthusiasts? Do not think Microsoft planned to expand the Kinect market beyond XBox.

True, but I'm not sure that will gain you anything over a good touch mouse.

PowerPoint presentations... now those are dying for a small input device at the lectern that the presenter can wave their hand over to go forward, back, etc. Especially when you have to share a remote mouse with the 9 presenters in front of you. Ewww.

It would be more interesting if the camera/microphone in the Kinect device could be completely done away with, and existing webcams could be used. I've got one already in my 3 year old Dell.

If most of the processing is in the software as people are saying above then why not?

Kinect has an RGB camera and a depth sensor. The depth sensor information is part of the information used to separate people from the background, and work out where their joints are.The depth information comes from the sensor, the processing to work out where people are and where their skeleton is is done on the computer (or Xbox 360).

So your laptop would need a depth sensor. If you didn't need a depth sensor Kinect tech would be available on anything with a webcam, as you say.

The depth sensor is just an IR camera (which means a normal camera without the IR filter that's normally added) plus an IR emitter to output the structured light (a regular pattern whose distortion by the objects in the scene can be used to extrapolate the depth of the parts it intersects).

The tech is nothing special (it existed and was used in industry for quite a while). Coupling it to a cheap electronic pivot, normal camera and microphone array cheaply was however a very neat trick. The skeletal tracking stuff is also pretty nice, but is as they say all software.

It is possible to do this yourself with semi off the shelf parts (the emitter would be a PITA I think) but the whole point of doing this with the kinect is that it's cheaper than doing it yourself. MSFT has huge economies of scale and are not (currently) trying to eke out big (any?) profits on each kinect device so it's hard to compete (and it comes with an SDK and everything aligned and calibrated so why bother).

PowerPoint presentations... now those are dying for a small input device at the lectern that the presenter can wave their hand over to go forward, back, etc. Especially when you have to share a remote mouse with the 9 presenters in front of you. Ewww.

Good point, but hardly requires the tech of Kinect to pull off.

The nice part of the remotes with the Next and Previous buttons on them is that they are unobtrusive.

I was thinking more than just the next slide and previous slide. It takes forever to design slides with animations, but the presenter might want to be able to zoom in on a photo or on the fly decide they need to show two slides at once based on audience feedback.

Of course 99% of all presentations will still be a slide full of text in Comic Sans that the presenter stands and reads, as you supposedly follow along on your printout copy of the presentation.